


did you see the flares

by Spooberdem



Category: Avengers: Endgame - Fandom, Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies)
Genre: Angst, Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, Canonical Character Death, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Fluff, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), but there's happy moments too don't worry, parkner, spiderlad, we are EARNING this fucking angst tag, y'all are in for a ride
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-05
Updated: 2019-08-05
Packaged: 2020-06-09 19:45:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,281
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19482739
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Spooberdem/pseuds/Spooberdem
Summary: Five years. Harley had five years with Tony after the Snap, without needing to worry about saving the world.Replaced, Peter's mind whispers to him.You werereplaced.And it hurts so, so much.(tl;dr Parkner enemies-to-lovers, I suck at summaries sorry)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Nobody asked for a Parkner enemies to lovers fic, but here I am with my bullshit.
> 
> This fic does not take into consideration the events of FFH. It can probably fit into the MCU timeline but we're not mentioning anything from Far From Home here.
> 
> I do my own editing, so if there are any errors or things I can improve, feel free to point them out. Otherwise, enjoy!

The funeral is too crowded.

Every single Avenger is here, in Tony's living room. The ceremony outside was completely silent, but at the reception there are voices overlapping and filling in the spaces between people, making it feel even more packed than it is. Peter has the chance to jump in and talk to any one of them, but he just can't bring himself to care. In the faces among the sea of black clothes, the one Peter wants to see is the one who he's never going to see again.

Standing in the corner of the room, he feels like a complete stranger. Sure, Peter's technically an Avenger, but Tony was the only one he ever really got to know. As the others converse, laugh, mourn together, they still feel like his childhood heroes that Peter had action figures and posters of, distant and unreachable, not comrades who fought by his side. (And before that, some of them fought against him.)

A little girl in a black dress walks up to Peter and tugs at his sleeve, snapping him out of his thoughts. She's around four or five, with brown hair and dark eyes. Peter knows those eyes.

“Hi, I'm Morgan,” the girl says. _Holy crap, this is Tony's daughter._ “Are you Peter?” she asks.

“Yes, I am,” he ruffles her hair, making her giggle.

“Daddy knows you,” Morgan tells him. “He says you're really smart. And nice.” Her words are completely innocent, but they still jolt him. Peter smiles at her instead.

“Really? Well I bet you're smart and nice too.” Seeing as this is the child of Pepper Potts and Tony Stark, Peter guesses that he's probably not wrong.

“Daddy says I'm really smart,” she says proudly. “He says I'll get to be the boss of his company.” _Oh_. Tony should be here to see Morgan become CEO of Stark Industries in the future, but that future has crumbled to dust.

He's not going to cry in front of Morgan. Judging by her perkiness, she hasn't processed what's happened to Tony just yet, and it’s not Peter’s place to change that. Not here, not now.

“I think you're going to be a good boss one day,” he tells her. She lights up at the praise.

“Yay!” Even though she's known Peter in person for approximately one minute, Morgan pulls him down and gives him a hug.

Pepper materializes from the crowd, a brave mask of a smile on her face that can't hide the sadness behind her eyes.

“Oh, Morgan, there you are!” she exclaims. Then a softer, “How are you, Peter?”

“I don't know,” he glances away. “As good as I can be, I guess.” Pepper nods in understanding.

“Well, you're here for the next few weeks, so if you need anything at all or just need to talk, I'm here, all right?”

“Okay, he says quietly. “Thanks for letting me stay again, Mrs. Po- Mrs. Stark.”

“Pepper,' she corrects him. “And it's no problem, Peter, you're a pleasure to have around.” She turns her attention to Morgan. “Morgan, are you hungry? We brought the food out.” The girl detaches herself from Peter and looks toward her mother.

“I want a juice pop,” she says.

“You already had one today, honey,” Pepper takes her hand. “Maybe later, okay? But there's other things for you to eat.” Satisfied, Morgan lets herself be towed off by Pepper, calling “Bye, Pete! See you later!” over her shoulder.

 _She's too nice_ , Peter thinks as the pair walk away. Pepper lost her husband less than a week ago, leaving her a single mother and a widow with a company to run, but she still offered for Peter to stay at the Stark house by the lake until he got some closure. A chance to say goodbye, if that's possible.

With nobody he feels like talking to, Peter stays at the edges of the room. Thor has his, what, at least fifth glass of wine in hand, telling some story to Bruce Banner and Steve Rogers with animated hand gestures. Wanda Maximoff is sitting on the couch with Hawkeye's kids, fascinating them by levitating books and cups off the coffee table. The walking tree, Groot, is that what he’s called? Is curled up in an armchair, engrossed in a video game.

Everyone is so distracted that nobody but Peter notices another boy in a black suit storm out of the house, slamming the door with a bang.

*****

There's a path that winds down from Tony's yard to the lake, then curls around part of it between the water and the trees. Peter finds the boy seated on a large flat rock along that path, throwing pebbles into the lake with obvious force.

“Hey,” Peter ventures. The boy turns, mild surprise on his face, and Peter gets his first good look.

He seems to be around Peter's age, maybe a year or two older, and a couple inches taller. There's a hard set to his jaw as he hurls rocks into the water with determination, but if not for his anger Peter can tell that he's the kind of person who could smile (or smirk) easily. A curl of light brown hair has fallen down out of place above his eyes, and _holy crap_ , those eyes. They're blue, but an incredibly intense color, like someone concentrated the sky in them. It's captivating. Peter has to force himself to look away.

The boy nods in acknowledgment to his presence, but otherwise says nothing as Peter approaches.

“Kinda loud inside, huh?” he says, after a pause.

“Yeah,” Peter stares out over the lake. A ducks swims steadily across its surface in the distance. Squirrels chatter in the trees. It's so peaceful here, compared to not just inside the house but also the rest of New York. It's easier here for Peter to pretend that his world hasn't been turned upside down.

The boy scoots to the side of the rock, a shadow of a friendly smile making an appearance.

“Care to join me?” he asks. Peter shrugs and takes a seat beside him.

“What do you,” the boy starts. “What can you even say to the _Avengers_ about something like this? All those guys back there,” he gestures toward the house, “they don’t know me, only Tony’s family did, and 'I'm sorry' coming from a random kid won't mean shit to them. Hell, it barely means anything to me anymore.”

“Lost someone like Mr. Sta- like Tony before?” Peter asks softly. The boy sighs.

“More than once. Doesn't get any easier, you just get more pissed off at everyone around you.” A wry exhale of a laugh escapes him.

“This is my... third... time,”Peter counts. Third time losing a mentor. Third time losing a father.

“Ah.” He feels a warm hand, rough with calluses squeeze his comfortingly. The boy pulls away, and another stone hits the water's surface with a vengeance.

“I guess the other Avengers don’t really understand either,” the boy continues. “They lost a friend, or a teammate, whatever. But how I saw Tony… it was different than that.” His gaze flicks over Peter, studying him, and he feels his face grow warm. “I think it was probably different for you too.”He's right. The Avengers saw Tony as an equal. None of them would really get what it feels like to lose him the way Peter did.

“Sorry, I'm ranting,” the boy apologizes. “It's been a long day.”

"It's fine," Peter shifts closer to him so they sit shoulder to shoulder.The boy doesn't object or move away, and together they watch in silence while the afternoon sun sinks lower in the sky. A wreath bearing Tony's iron heart floats on, journeying to the horizon.

As the dusk approaches and the sky turns pink and orange, guests from the funeral begin to trickle out of the house. Peter stands up.

“I guess I should head back now,” he jerks his head towards the house. “I need to say goodbye to my aunt before she leaves.”

“Oh, are you staying here?”

“Just a few weeks, then I have to head back to Queens. You?”

“Yeah, for the next little while. Helping Pepper and Morgan until they've got their stuff sorted out.” The boy looks at him with a slightly curious, slightly hopeful look in those unbelievably blue eyes. “Guess we’ll be spending some time together. You got a name?”

“Peter. Peter Parker.” The boy shakes his hand, but Peter doesn't miss the wariness rapidly seeping into his expression.

“I'm Harley.”

_Shit._

“Oh,”is all he can say. Peter can only think that he needs to get away from here, _now_. “Okay. Um. Sorry, I'm just going to go… inside. Nice to meet you.” He turns and practically bolts back down the path, leaving Harley sitting by the lakeshore.

*****

Aunt May is just coming down the porch steps when Peter arrives.

“I'm going home now,” she says, wrapping him in her arms. “Are you sure you'll be okay here? Do you have everything?”

“I've got all my stuff, and don't worry, I'll be fine,” Peter reassures her. “Pepper knows what she's doing.”

“All right. But if anything does happen to you, don't forget-”

“To tell you,” he finishes. “I will.”

“Okay then,” she kisses Peter on the cheek, then steps away towards her car. “Goodbye, Peter. I love you.”

“Love you too, May,” he calls back. He stands in the yard, watching until her vehicle disappears along the forest-lined road. It'll be a long time until he can repay May for this. She never really came around to liking Tony very much, but she understands how much he meant to Peter and she's letting him stay at the house even though she just got him back. Peter doesn't deserve to have her as his aunt.

There's no one in the living room when he enters the house. Peter can hear Pepper and Happy in the kitchen, washing dishes from today's events, but Morgan is nowhere to be found. There's a clear mess left all over the room from the people earlier, but that's not what he's looking at.

Tony kept a lot of photos. On bookshelves, in albums, everywhere there's a reasonable amount of space. The mantle is particularly crowded, so covered in picture frames that Peter can barely see its surface. Most are of the Stark family, with a couple of Morgan's grandparents somewhere in the back. Peter picks up a photo of Tony and Pepper at their wedding, which he wasn't there to witness. It stings, to think of Tony at one of the happiest times of his life that he didn't get to see.

But the images Peter's particularly drawn to are those of Harley. He's featured in quite a few of them: a younger version of him holding a, what is that, a potato gun? A fifteen or sixteen year old Harley working on something beneath the hood of a car beside Tony, oil on his hands and a wrench in his grasp as he concentrates. There's a picture that can't be from more than a year ago of him and Morgan, sitting on the living room floor with a pile of Lego as they build something together.

“ _Hey, did I ever tell you about Harley?” Tony asked in the lab one day, the two of them working on_ _a_ _new design for_ _the_ _webshooters._

_"Um, no, I don't think so.”_

_“Huh. He's this kid from_ _Tennessee_ _. Pretty_ _handy with computers and_ _engineering_ _._ _And a pain in the ass.”_ _Tony sounded exasperated, but it wasn't hard to tell that he cared for this 'Harley'._

_“You see him a lot?” Peter already felt a small twinge of jealousy, stupid as it was._

_“Eh. I try to visit at least once every couple months. We text, or rather, I try to ignore him while he spams me with, what are they called?_ _M_ _emes?”_ _Jeez,_ _he_ _was close enough to Tony to_ _do_ that _?_ _They_ _must_ _be_ _close._

_“You sound like an old man, Mr. Stark.”_

_“That's not nice. Anyway, I ta_ _l_ _k to him,_ _help his family out when they need it._ _Oh, and I_ _get him supplies for his projects when he bugs me for_ _stuff,_ _otherwise he'll hack into my bank account and buy_ _whatever he wants_ _anyway._ _He's_ _great_ _like that.” Tony stood up and raked a hand through his hair, sighing. “He saved my lif_ _e_ _, though, so I guess that's fair.”_

That was the first time Peter ever heard of Harley Keener. He'd thought he was special, to have _Tony Stark_ take him under his wing but nope, he wasn't the first. Harley never came to New York, at least if he did Peter never met him, and he never knew what he looked like until today. But he'd been mentioned to Peter on many, many occasions.

“ _Hey,_ _check this out_ _,_ _”_ _Tony made a gesture over his watch, pulling up a hologram for Peter to see._ _It was a first-person video of someone's hand in a metal gauntlet, a glowing circle set into the palm. As he watched, the glove began to shoot a beam of bright white energy at a target, then sparks flew from the light circle and with a small exploding noise the whole gauntlet went dark._

_“Ah, shit,” the person muttered. “No, I'm fine, Mom!” they shouted frantically to a distant voice. The clip ended._

_“Who's that?” Peter asked._

_“Oh, that was Harley,” Tony replied casually. “He_ _wants_ _to recreate_ _my suit and be Iron Man someday_ _. Not there yet, although he's gotten closer_ _to making the tech_ _than a lot of_ _other_ _people.”_

_“But no one can replace Iron Man, Mr. Stark,” Peter told him. “That's you.”_

_“Kid, one day I_ _'ll be too old to fly the suit. So will Rhodey.” Tony shrugged. “Someone needs to be there.”_

God, Peter had been an idiot just now. What other teen besides himself would Tony have been close enough to as to warrant an invitation to his funeral? How had he not realized?

“ _You'd trust him with_ _being Iron Man_ _?”_ _He_ _hadn't meant to say it out loud._

 _“Peter,” Tony_ _clapped him on the shoulder_ _._ _“_ _I trust him as much as I trust you. Which, by the way, is a lot. I don't trust many people. Be honored.”_

Peter had always felt like he was in a competition. Harley was clearly intelligent, just as much of a prodigy to Tony as Peter, and despite living so far away while Peter was always in New York he'd apparently been worthy of Tony's trust just as much.

And now, looking at the photos? Harley won that competition.

Five years. Harley had _five years_ with Tony after the Snap. Peter never got the opportunity to spend as much time with Tony as he wanted to, and then Thanos happened. When he was revived, there was only a few minutes until he lost Tony forever. But Harley, Harley got to live a normal life in Tony's presence, without worrying about saving the world or anything like that. He got to see Tony's marriage, see Morgan grow, someone whose existence Peter wasn't even aware of until a day or two ago. Peter should have been at Tony's side, but he wasn't.

 _Replaced_ , whispers his mind. _You were replaced_. And it hurts so, so much.

Harley got five extra years. He got to be all that Peter ever wanted to be for Tony. He's staying in the same house so there'll be no avoiding him.

This is going to be fantastic.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so I was planning on fully participating in Parkner Week, but life happened and I didn't get enough time to plan stuff, so you get another chapter of this mess instead. Happy Parkner Week, everyone!
> 
> Could you guys _please_ leave feedback on this particular chapter, if you don't mind? I don't care whether it's good or bad, just, if you could tell me your thoughts on it that would be great. This is the most braincells I've had to put towards a fic in a long time, and I had to rewrite this particular chapter a literal five times, so while I'm satisfied with what I'm posting I'm still a bit unsure. If you wanna leave a quick comment, that would be awesome!
> 
> Enjoy!

“Peter!” Something small jumps onto his bed. Peter jerks awake to find Morgan smiling down at him, hair a frizzy halo around her face.

“Hey Morgan,” Peter mumbles sleepily, rolling over. “What time is it?” She shrugs.

“I dunno. Mommy and I made you pancakes though.” A fantastic smell hits Peter then, snapping him to full alertness. “They have chocolate.” Oh, and that's all he needs to hear. Peter sits up and reaches for the plate on his nightstand, shoving a huge chunk of pancake in his mouth. They're filled with melted chocolate chips and taste incredible. He practically inhales food whenever he has a chance, to keep up with his enhanced metabolism, so consuming these doesn't take every long. Morgan keeps him company while he eats.

“So, whatcha going to do today?” Peter asks, setting down the empty plate.

“I wanna see Harley.” Morgan looks at him hopefully. “Come with me?” Truthfully, no, Peter doesn't want to. He hasn't seen or spoken to Harley Keener since their interaction by the lake, and things would be a lot easier for Peter if he could keep it that way.

But while they're both in the same household, Peter _will_ be seeing Harley again whether he wants to or not, and he may as well get it over with. Plus, he likes Morgan, and he doesn't want to disappoint her. At least for now, spending time with Tony's daughter is worth tolerating Harley.

“Okay,” he gives in.

“Yay!” Morgan grabs Peter’s arm, attempting to tug him out of bed.

“Whoa, hold on!” he laughs. “Give me a second to change out of my pajamas.” Morgan sticks out her tongue at him.

“You have three minutes,” she declares, walking out of the room with a cocky grin that’s just a bit too reminiscent of Tony.

A pair of jeans and a sweater later, Peter lets Morgan lead him downstairs to the workshop, a huge room accessed by a heavy door in the basement.

“Harley,” Morgan calls out, running into the space. The other boy is standing by a table, working at some project with a screwdriver. Even though it can't have been that long since she's seen Harley, Morgan dashes up and hugs his legs.

“Hey genius, how are ya?” Harley puts his tool down and hoists Morgan up into his arms, swinging them both around. “You eat breakfast yet?”

“Yep! Mommy helped me make pancakes,” she points to Peter. “And I got breakfast for Pete, too.”

“Oh, that's nice,” Harley says enthusiastically to her, but when he looks at Peter then his smile has a more guarded look to it.

“You know Peter, right?” Morgan waves at him.

“Yeah, we've met.” Harley glances away from Peter, refocuses on Morgan. “Hey, stop squirming or I gotta put you down. You're getting heavier.” She only giggles, which makes her move around even more in Harley's grasp. “Okay, you're sitting down. Squirmy-wormies don't get to be carried.” He deposits Morgan gently on a stool beside him.

Peter witnesses Harley takes Morgan's hand in his, guiding her while she adjusts something with the screwdriver. The way they interact seems so natural, so comfortable. From the photos that he saw on the mantle, Peter knows that Harley's been present in Morgan's life since she was born but the bond the two of them must have created didn't quite register to his mind until he was looking right at it.

 _Five years._ If not for Thanos, it could be Peter sharing that bond with Morgan. Maybe the thought stings, just a bit, but he pretends it doesn't and turns away from the two.

The layout of this lab is different from what he was used to at the Tower or the Avengers Compound, though it's similar in a lot of ways. The bots standing in the corner. The labels on the cabinets for when Tony was working at night guided by instinct alone and didn't know what went where. The post-it note in Pepper's handwriting on the coffee machine that reads 'no more than three cups per day', a pile of discarded Keurig cartridges in the trash can indicating that the instruction was disobeyed multiple times. It's been... a while since Tony was last here, but through Peter's elevated senses he can detect the faint smell of something burning and judging by the black marks on several surfaces, he guesses that things exploded a lot in here, too. Peter runs a hand over a familiar-but-not counter, walks circles around a room he feels he should know with certainty, but doesn't.

“Hey, hey, good job!” Harley says as Morgan sets the screwdriver down. She beams proudly and laughs, catching Peter's eye.

“Pete, c'mere!” She beckons him over. “See what Harley's making!” He hesitates at first, not much feeling like going near Harley, but he shuffles forward anyway.

It's a sort of gun that lies on the table, clearly not designed for bullets, if the wide barrel is anything to go by. Peter can recall seeing a picture of Harley last night holding a similarly designed weapon, though this one is sleeker compared to the other one, and is silver instead of being brightly colored.

“Potato gun?”

“Yeah,” Harley seems a bit surprised that Peter recognizes it, though there's a small hint of pride there too.

“Cool,” Peter reaches out to touch the handle before remembering it's someone else's. “Uh, is it okay if I…?” Harley sighs, crosses his arms.

“Why not,” he concedes, though his gaze never leaves Peter as he carefully picks up the gun, holding it in a shooting stance. The balance is good, and Harley's done a decent job, but even though he gravitates more towards chemistry and biology Peter's familiar enough with engineering that he can note a few potential improvements.

“Barrel looks a little long,” he remarks. “Gauge is wide, too. Might lower your feet-per-second.” It's a harmless observation but Harley recoils slightly. “What?” Peter sets the gun back down.

“You-” Harley begins to reply, but looks from Morgan to Peter and decides against it, shaking his head in a _not now._

“Harl? You okay?” Morgan asks confusedly.

“Hmm? Yeah, don't worry about it, genius,” Harley reassures her. “Here, why don't we go to the kitchen and find some potatoes to test this thing out?”

“Okie-dokie!” Morgan says happily. “We'll be right back, Pete!” She skips out of the room. Harley flashes a strange not-quite-a-glare at Peter before following her.

It's only once Peter's left standing in the workshop that he realizes something: He's got his reasons for not wanting to be in Harley's presence, but he hasn't considered why Harley doesn't like _him_.

Harping on that subject and doing some in-depth thinking about it isn't something Peter feels like doing, though, so he while he's in a lab anyway he utilizes his one fail-proof distraction: he gets to work.

*****

Peter used to have a notebook, filled with his web formula trials on which chemical combinations did or didn't work. He has no idea where it is now, and even if he did, he didn't bring it with him to Tony's house. The basic ingredients of the web fluid he remembers, but he wants to give it more tensile strength, so it looks like he'll be experimenting without any guidance today. Oh well. More to keep his mind off of things.

He's scribbling down formula components onto a sheet of paper when Morgan comes back into the workshop, in triumphant possession of several potatoes. Harley breezes right past Peter, not bothering to look at him.

Morgan has surprisingly decent aim, shooting pieces of scrapped metal off a table from halfway across the room. The minor shortcomings Peter noticed don't actually have a huge impact on the overall performance of the gun, and it's interesting watching Harley and Morgan take turns with it, having a contest. Harley misses several times on purpose so Morgan can win, holding the potato gun aloft in victory.

Morgan eventually leaves Harley to run some more tests and makes her way over to Peter.

“What's that?” she asks, poking at the equations he's written on his paper. Okay, how does he explain this to a five-year-old?

“It's… sticky fluid,” he says. He has no idea if Morgan knows he's Spider-Man, or if, more importantly, Harley does. In case they aren't aware, he doesn't want to purposefully give it away. “I'm trying to make it stronger,” Peter circles a few additions with his pencil, “by putting these in.”

“Huh,” Morgan hauls herself up onto the counter so she's eye level with Peter, points to a chemical in his notes at random. “What's that?”

“That's carbon tetrachloride.”

“Te-tra-cl-o-ride,” she says carefully. “What's it do?”

“Well, it...” Morgan seems genuinely fascinated as Peter goes through the formula with her, explaining what each component does in the simplest way he can. Every other person he's ever discussed the webs with is either on par with him or knows more about science than Peter does, so it's refreshing to get to teach someone else, especially someone so curious.

He looks up, once, to catch Harley watching the two of them. His expression is stony and unreadable, though it slides into a near-scowl as soon as he sees Peter looking at him.

Afterwards, Morgan starts asking what these chemicals will do if they're put together, and so on, but her attention span begins to wander at this point and it's not long after that she decides she's hungry.

“I'm going to make sandwiches!” she says. “You want one, Pete?”

“Sure. Can you make peanut butter? Or Nutella?”

“Yep,” she affirms. “Harley?”

“Raspberry jam,” he calls. Morgan leaves with her lunch orders, allowing Peter to start putting this formula together.

All the cupboards and drawers in the workshop are meticulously marked with the names of their intended contents, but Tony's tendency to work while severely sleep deprived meant that sometimes (a lot of the time) things never wound up back where they should have been. It's a curse that Peter has learned to become used to after working around Tony for several years, but it's still a hassle digging around for what he needs after he spends five minutes looking for silica with no luck.

“Hey Dum-E?” The robot perks up at the sound of its name. “Did Mr. Stark keep silica gel in here?” Dum-E bobs its arm in a motion that appears to be a nod, starts to roll towards Peter and rams straight into a table, knocking it over and blocking its path.

“Aw, come on!” Peter loves Tony's bots, he does, but their clumsiness can be exasperating. “Useless robot.” He turns away from the struggling Dum-E to see Harley staring at him across the lab. “Uh, can I help you?”

“Are you trying to mess with me, or are you just that oblivious?” Harley demands.

“What?” Peter protests.

“Are you,” Harley says slowly, “fucking with my head on purpose?”

“I have no idea what the hell you're talking about.”

“You don't?” Those bright blue eyes bore into Peter's own, seemingly searching for... something before Harley takes a step back, shaking his head.

“Wow, you're really… no idea… unbelievable… who you act like,” he mutters. “Damn.”

“Uh, you mind clarifying for me?” Peter seriously doesn't have a clue what the other boy's going on about. Harley just shakes his head again.

“For someone smart enough for Tony, you're not very self-aware.” His voice trips ever so slightly over Tony's name, but Harley looks down again and doesn't say anything else.

“Okay...” Peter says uncertainly, going back to his own work. Clearly something he's doing is ticking off Harley, but he doesn't know what.

Ugh, he can figure this incident out later. Right now he's got webs to make.

*****

The afternoon starts off okay.

Morgan plays with the bots, softly throwing a spare potato across the workshop for Dum-E, U and Butterfingers to chase after like a small automaton stampede. As a result, dents end up in more than one table, but it's not serious damage.

Peter quietly measures out the ingredients for his formula. It feels strange and foreign, going through the process like this. He's made his webs in Tony's workshops before, but never without the hum of a dozen machines in the background, without the roar of rock music blasting over the speaker system, without Tony's voice going at a mile a minute while he goes through different ideas. Everything feels too open, too cold now. Except…

“Hey FRI, run this simulation for me please?” a voice says.

Peter looks up, and his eyes lock onto Harley.

Harley, who is moving holograms around him with a wave of his hand, studying each one before directing it away again. Harley, who is casually talking away to FRIDAY about velocity and trajectory. Harley, who Peter now realizes is wearing a Black Sabbath t-shirt.

Peter has to close his eyes for a second, an image of Tony, no, _Harley_ seared on the back of his eyelids. It's familiar, too familiar and God, it hurts. Peter opens his eyes, glances at Harley again. He's attaching something to the potato gun now, tongue stuck between his teeth in concentration. Does he know how much he's acting like Tony right now?

As empty as it felt before, the lab is suddenly suffocating, too small. Peter leans forward, bracing his arms on the tabletop and tries to suck in a breath, but everything seems constricting. He straightens, addresses Morgan, who's sitting on the floor with the robots.

“Hey, I'm just going to go walk around outside for a bit, alright?”

“You want me to go?” she offers, tilting her head to the side to look at him. He doesn't mind her company, he just wants, needs to get away from Harley.

“Sure.”

“Okay.”

*****

Peter starts to feel a little better as soon as he steps outside, feeling the gentle breeze in the air. Morgan walks beside him, bundled in a jacket.

As it turns out, Morgan likes to climb. On rocks, on the porch railing, in the trees. Peter lets her clamber onto his shoulders to boost her up onto a branch, though as the person currently supervising Morgan he has to be responsible and tell her not to go any higher than his head. It's a nice distraction.

Eventually, they wind up sitting on the porch steps. Morgan amuses herself by picking up pebbles and throwing them into the driveway.

“Are you okay?” she asks Peter. “You look sad.”

“I do?”

“When I'm sad, I talk to Harley,” Morgan continues. “Or Mommy. Or Daddy...” she trails off for a second. “Can I talk to you?”

“Erm. Yeah.” She shifts closer to Peter.

“I miss Daddy. A lot.” Oh.

“I... miss him too,” He doesn't exactly know how to put a positive spin on this.

“But you and Harley are here now, so it'll be better,” Morgan states. She sound so sure that Peter can't tell her any different, can't, won't tell her that sometimes it doesn't get better no matter what you do.

But the amount of faith she's apparently putting into him is astonishing, so while Peter's here then he'll do his best.

“It's fun, when Harley's here,” Morgan tells him. “He lives in the city, but when he's here we play and go swimming.”

“That does sound like fun,” Peter says, doing his best to sound convinced. Morgan, however, gives him a face that suggests otherwise.

“Are you okay with Harley?”

“Um,” because he's not quite sure if he can explain it to Morgan. “No, I'm fine. I just don't know him as well as you do. I'm trying to get used to him.”

“Oh,” She seems to accept that explanation. “Well, Harley's really nice. You can be friends.”

“You think so?”

“Yep!” Morgan sounds confident, patting Peter on the arm reassuringly before standing up to go inside. Peter sits by himself, going over her words.

_Maybe she's right, but she doesn't know just how long it might take,_ he thinks wryly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun fact: the chemicals I mentioned as being part of the web fluid are actually part of the (canonical) formula, and can be found in Peter's notebook from Homecoming.
> 
> Sooo... when I first started this fic I said that after I posted the second chapter then there would be frequent updates, but a bunch of shit popped up in life that I have to deal with, so there's be another little while of waiting between this and the next chapter but I promise it will come. I'm really, really sorry. Love you all, and enjoy the other incredible authors on this site writing for Parkner Week!

**Author's Note:**

> Please feel free to leave kudos, subscribe, comment or constructively criticize. Any of those will be gratefully appreciated!
> 
> Thanks for reading!


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